Real Battles, Fantasy Cast

Soap Operas Meet Tv's Pro Wrestling

October 31, 1999|By MIKE HOLTZCLAW Daily Press

NORFOLK — To the producers of "Battle Dome," gladiators is a four-letter word.

But if the new TV show can duplicate the success achieved by "American Gladiators" - to which it will inevitably be compared, against the producers' wishes - it will make a lot of programming directors very happy.

The show, which debuted in September and airs locally at 11 p.m. Sundays on WGNT-TV, attempts to capitalize on the massive mainstream success of professional wrestling by offering a different sort of "sports-entertainment."

Like "Gladiators," which became a cult favorite earlier in the decade, "Battle Dome" puts its contestants through a series of physically demanding tests in which they compete against each other while being battered by a group of colorfully costumed characters played by buff and buxom bodybuilders. The show's "Warriors" often play off cultural archetypes, such as the rap-spouting African- American T-Money, the Asian martial artist Sleepwalker and the deceptively coquettish schoolgirl Angel, who looks like the evil alter ego of Britney Spears.

What makes "Battle Dome" different from "American Gladiators" is that it adds serialized plots - "storylines" in the wrestling vocabulary - involving rivalries and romances among the various Warriors. By adding this additional layer of intrigue, the show's producers hope to combine the most marketable elements of both pro wrestling and soap operas.

"Many fans live vicariously through characters on their favorite shows," says veteran sportscaster Steve Albert, the show's play-by-play man. "They might be fed up with real sports, with the selfishness and greed and the money and with a guy getting paid $8 million to play sports and saying he's not happy with it. I think that's why fans are tuning in to shows like this - they don't have to deal with any of that garbage. With a show like this one, they get all the fun, get to have a good time, without any of the negative stuff."

Albert stresses that in spite of the show's elements of fiction and fantasy, the athletic competition is completely real. He said he would not have signed on with "Battle Dome" if the contests were scripted and choreographed like pro wrestling matches.

A member of the well-known sportscasting family - he jokes he got this job "because my brothers Marv and Al weren't available" - Albert still does boxing for Showtime, along with baseball, basketball and hockey on other networks. But he says he had no reservations about joining the cast of a show that comes at sports from a different angle.

"There's been a real boom in this new wave of sports-entertainment shows," he said during a recent PR visit to Hampton Roads. "And after so long doing the 'regular sports,' I decided it was time to cross over to the other side. The entertainment side. And I'm having fun."

Accustomed to two-hour basketball games and three-hour football games, Albert has had to adjust to a much longer shooting schedule. The show, filmed at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, tapes two episodes per day, a process that takes about 14 hours.

"It's like working a sitcom or a movie - stop, start, take a break, start up again," he said. "The real trick is keeping sharp over a long, laborious, exhausting day of taping."

Rich Davis, programming director at WGNT, said the early episodes of "Battle Dome" have drawn a household share of about 2 1/2, which means that each Sunday night about 20,000 Hampton Roads TV sets are tuning in. Not bad for a new show in an obscure time slot, but still losing about half of the audience from the "Jerry Springer" syndication that airs immediately before. He said it has drawn higher ratings in other cities where the stations air it following pro wrestling telecasts.

Davis said he will be keeping a close eye on the show's ratings both here and in other cities, and he would not be surprised if "Battle Dome" gradually builds to a much larger audience as viewers become more familiar with it.

"People have been looking for original programming, something different," he said. "These shows are very entertaining, not the same thing people have been seeing for 20 years. It's very personality-based - not as much about the action as about the people who are doing the battling."

Mike Holtzclaw can be reached at 928-6479 or by e-mail at mholtzclaw@ dailypress.com